


Blood Price

by EldritchMage



Series: Logan and Rachel Osaka [3]
Category: Wolverine and the X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:59:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3734836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EldritchMage/pseuds/EldritchMage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is Part 3 of my Logan/Rachel Osaka saga. Hope you enjoy it.</p><p>What happens when Logan tries to do right by his lady, Rachel Osaka, and give her up, so that she doesn't fall prey to Weapon X? The guys who put the adamantium on his bones and the scrambled eggs in his brain find a way to snare her anyway. The bait? Logan, of course.</p><p>And what's Sabertooth gonna say when a woman a foot shorter and 100 kilos smaller than he kicks his ass? Actually, she does a little bit more than that...</p><p>Please leave me a comment to let me know how you liked my tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Price

It was an innocuous brown padded envelope with my address on it. Inside was an unlabeled DVD case with a single disk inside. The only reason I didn’t toss it in the trash was the single word scrawled on the envelope in place of a return address.

The single word was Wolverine.

A thousand thoughts went through my mind, few of them good. Wolverine is one name of a man who’s been my teacher, my friend, my lover… so much more. He was given that name by people who thought he was no better than a lab rat, an experiment, a man who could be made into a killing machine.

He calls himself Logan. He is well over a hundred years old, though he looks perhaps thirty. He is never sick. His body heals any injury, no matter how severe, in a few moments. His skeleton is armored with adamantium, the hardest metal known, but far harder is the suffering he endured at the hands of those who infused him with that metal. His survival says much about his strength of will and the faith he holds in the samurai training he received in Japan long ago. He has taught me many things, some of them cruel realities, more of them truths about honor, love, loyalty, and endurance.

Because the envelope read Wolverine, I knew Logan hadn’t sent it to me. His enemies had.

It was late. I’d been onsite with a client far later than I’d expected, but I hadn’t minded. I’m an antiques dealer, and I’d just delivered some valuable pieces to a client. Mrs. Dow was quite particular about her Chippendale chairs and Pembroke end tables, but given the money she was willing to spend and the clear enjoyment she got from the pieces she bought, I’d willingly spent months tracking down a pair of Royal Crown Derby two-handled covered vases with just the right provenance for her. The price took my breath away, although Mrs. Dow had never hesitated while I’d bid on them for her at a prestigious auction. With that amount invested in such delicate porcelain confections, I wasn’t about to have them delivered other than by my own hands. So on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, I had driven out to her home on Long Island and happily presented them to her myself. She was so delighted that we passed a couple of hours discussing her other pieces, and setting them in just the right place on just the right sideboard. By the time I’d left, I’d hit rainy day rush hour traffic in New York City, and it was close to nine before I’d collected the mail from my box and let myself into my condo.

I left my raincoat and bag on the foyer chair and went right to my DVD player, steeling myself for what I might see.

It was as bad as I had expected. It opened with a shot of yesterday’s New York Times, clearly showing the date. Once the video cam pulled away from the paper, I saw a concrete cell that held Logan naked and bound hand and foot in a chair bolted to the floor. The detail was exquisitely crisp to make sure I recognized Logan clearly. He was slumped in the chair, maybe only half conscious. To ram home the truth of his identity, hands intruded into the scene to yank Logan’s head up by his hair, then slash his face with long talons. As his torn skin miraculously repaired itself, I knew who had inflicted the wounds – Victor Creed, Sabretooth, Logan’s long-time enemy. He’d come to be mine as well.

There was no sound from the cell, just a voiceover that directed me to dismantle the distribution network I’d set up to disseminate information about Weapon X.

Logan had told me about Victor Creed shortly after we’d become lovers, how he had the same healing factor and adamantium-laced skeleton as Logan did, and how he’d sadistically killed Logan’s wife. Logan had worried that Creed would target me, and I’d been frightened enough to put some of my fortune to work. I’d uncovered more than I’d wanted to about the shady black ops organization called Weapon X that had trained Creed as well as Logan. When Creed had come after me a few months ago, I’d told him what I’d collected about his sordid handlers. I’d had the naïve idea that if I had enough damning information about Weapon X, they’d leave Logan and me alone in exchange for my silence.

In just five minutes of video, the depth of my naïveté hit home with all the subtlety of Victor Creed’s fists.

As the camera zoomed in on Logan’s battered face, the voiceover gave detailed instructions of how to prove that I’d dismantled my net. If I didn’t comply, then Logan would spend the rest of his life chained in that cell, subject to whatever Victor Creed and his handlers dreamed up. I was to tell no one of my predicament, of course. My phone and computer and other forms of communications would be monitored to see that I didn’t.

I knew what Logan would say to such a threat, and what he’d want me to say. But Weapon X was no more principled than Creed was, and Creed was as immortal as Logan was. To ignore this threat was to condemn Logan to more suffering than I could bear.

I thought about triggering the net, and letting the chips fall where they may. But though Logan’s healing factor made him hard to kill, it wasn’t invincible, and Creed knew its limits.

It was likely that even if I did satisfactorily dismantle my net, Weapon X wouldn’t let Logan go. They considered him a renegade, and had tried repeatedly to drag him back into the fold. The DVD pointedly made no mention of what my compliance would buy. I expected that whatever I did would put me at as much risk as Logan. But I never considered doing anything else. One of the things Logan had taught me was the honor of a samurai, of doing the right thing regardless of the personal cost. Logan had done so for me more than once. So I would do for him. There were worse reasons to die, though I expected this would be one of the hardest ways.

I called my grandmother and asked her to watch my antiques shop for a few days. I made tea. Then I sat down at my computer.

 

* * *

 

When they pulled me out of the tank, they unstrapped me from the medical armature and let me fall naked, raw, and bleeding to the icy tile floor where I floundered like a dying animal. My bones burned from the inside out, a pain like no other, a forest fire through drought-dry scrub. I couldn’t die because as fast as my bones burned, my healing factor raced to replace them, ensuring that the agony didn’t end. I howled until my vocal chords were gone, faster than they healed, my body spasming and shuddering as if from electrical shocks. Claws came out of my hands. My body was too tortured to take them back in. Every touch, every breath, was a greater torture. I slipped on my own blood, jarring the claws, and I slashed at the floor, the air, myself, whatever came into reach –

No. That was old pain. Decades old. Not forgotten, but gone. Not here now.

I hurt as badly now as I had then, though the pain was different. I still floundered in my own blood. I was bound not by a medical armature, but by chains and cuffs made of the same metal on my bones. Whatever I’d done, it had made me someone’s whipping boy.

How did I get here? One minute I was in the depths of an Albertan forest… the next, here. I had strange dreams. I’d seen them before. Not these scenes, but the same brutal overlay, sifting my thoughts, rearranging them, manipulating them. Things I remembered came and went. Things I’d forgotten swam back into view, always accompanied by the burn of needles in my arms and agonizing pain if I fought the rush of visions. I’d learned not to. I retreated far, far inward, to a small place where I kept one memory, a warrior with a samurai sword waiting in a pose of meditation, waiting for the right moment, willing to appear weak until that right moment. My self. I shut my eyes and let the pain flow, ebb, flow, ebb, flow. Not the right moment.

In between eternities of pain, drugged nightmares, and the constant, brutal pressure to submit, brief moments of respite came. I was in a cell, chained, filthy, starving, healing from a score of wounds, shivering in the cold, but the pain was less. I remembered things other than what the visions told me. I remembered places without pain. I breathed with more quiet. I thought about Silver Fox, Mariko, both long dead. I wanted to join them. Then I remembered another woman still living, Japanese, petite, gentle, though her name had been taken from me. Somewhere, she lived in a place without pain, a place where I’d once been…

The pain started again. I shoved memory of the woman away, into the place where I held my core. I would not let the pain distort her.

The nightmares changed. She was in them. She was not what I remembered. She taunted me that my memories were false and would be stripped from me. But if they were false, why did they need to be stripped? My head was full of false memories. I held onto that as the pain rose, as the needles stabbed and the chains tightened. The drug dreams were the false memories, not those I recalled. But they were strong, and to recall otherwise brought terrific agony. She was why I was here, suffering. The drugs wanted to rid me of my terrible delusions of this woman. She was going to be my death, and I had to recognize that. I had to learn it, feel it, live it. I had to cast out the delusion, and once I had, I had to kill the danger herself. Her death meant my freedom –

That had to be the biggest load of bullshit that Weapon X had ever tried to cram into my head –

Painpainpainpain –

 

* * *

 

It took two days to dismantle the net. It was a large net, yes, but other considerations merited the time. I’d spent so much time in the hazy world of computer hackers that I put all of that expertise to bear as I worked. One aspect of my mutant talent is empathy – with a touch, I sense people’s emotions and something of their intent. I’d discovered that it allowed me to tell whether someone was honest with me or not. When I’d gone looking for good computer hackers, I’d quickly discovered which ones I could trust and which ones I couldn’t. I’d found a gem in a gangly, mountain-climbing, albino Scotsman named Daniel O’Shea. Aptly, Daemon was his mutant name. He divined the web world as if he saw the electrons themselves and coaxed them to do tricks. Passwords and IDs flocked to his call like dogs to biscuits. He had a strong streak of ethical outrage, too, and I hadn’t had to tell him much before he came to me with enough horror stories about Weapon X to fill uncounted megabytes.

I didn’t call on Daniel now. I didn’t have to. We’d worked out contingency plans, and how I would work in each case so that he’d recognize it. Before many minutes had gone by, his shadowy Internet presence joined mine, understanding without words what went on. He shadowed me as I dismantled everything we’d created – except for the dead man’s switch. An obscure computer in Belgium handled order entry for a book distributor, and in its heart lurked a virus that with a single command would restore the net to its full capability. There was no command for what Daniel would do after I completed my work, but there didn’t have to be. Daniel would know when I completed my work, and then he’d start his, safeguarding everything we’d put into place.

I prepared all the papers, proofs, and seals that the DVD had demanded of me. I packaged them exactly as directed. I carried them exactly as directed to a specific trendy coffee shop in SoHo. Then I’d ordered a latte and waited.

A nondescript, middle-aged little man whose only visible hair sprouted from his ears joined me after thirty minutes. In his natty little Harris Tweed suit and bow tie, he looked like a career insurance bureaucrat who spent his time mulling amortization tables.

“Sorry I’m late, Rachel,” he said distractedly as he plopped his newspaper down next to his black coffee. He sat down and put a bulky leather business satchel crammed with papers next to his chair. “Cross town traffic, you know.”

I looked at him over my latte. “It’s eleven in the morning. There isn’t any traffic.”

He smiled at me as if I were his daughter making a joke. “Of course not on the streets, my dear. Just over the web. Ah, I see you remembered the disk.”

I made no move to hand my package over to him. “I see you forgot to bring the price of the disk.”

“You know, we never discussed that,” he said with arched eyebrows and a shrug of both hands, as if it were a minor detail.

“Surely an oversight on your part.”

His eyes were kind only if you didn’t know what we were discussing. “Surely you’ll forgive me for reminding you, Rachel. I know you don’t want to make a scene over this.”

“What makes you think that? You’re holding someone against his will to get me to do something you want. That’s kidnapping and extortion. I however, haven’t committed a crime, so if there’s anyone here who shouldn’t want to make a scene, it’s you.”

“No, it’s you, Rachel, I assure you.” His smile was a fatherly as ever. “If you keep this up, if you do anything other than what was described to you, someone else pays.”

“My part is already done. All I have to give you is proof of that. You, however, have done nothing –”

“Did you expect me to bring him with me?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to trust that your attention to detail will be rewarded. It’ll take just a day or two.”

I narrowed my eyes. They never intended to let Logan go. I flexed my jaw.

Two things happened in rapid succession. Flexing my jaw triggered a tiny GPS beacon implanted in my body to start transmitting. The onset of the signal jolted my tablemate, whose friendly smile vanished, replaced for a split second with a terrifying, malevolent glare.

“Turn it off, or both of you are dead,” he snarled in a whisper.

I was frightened enough to comply. That won me another paternal smile from the hyena that gazed at me through the little man’s eyes.

“Good. I can see you’re serious about wanting what’s best. You’ll have to forgive me for not being as direct as you are. Symptom of the business, I’m afraid.”

“Get on with it.”

“All right, my dear. I am prepared to reassure you that you did the right thing, to show you what you’ve bought with your compliance. I’ll even let you see it before you hand over your part.”

He blessedly didn’t drag his awful game out any longer, but bent to pull a computer tablet from his bag. He busied himself with it, as happily anticipatory as if he were about to show me a family video. He turned it towards me, and pointed to an app window.

“Just touch Play.”

I looked at the tablet and wondered if touching it would send me to sleep like Sleeping Beauty’s spindle. Or would the little man move closer like a father to watch the video with me, close enough to stab me with a tranquilizing dart?

“It’s that button, dear,” he said, reaching over to start the app.

Logan’s face came into view. He was still in the cell, and he looked dead. I shoved my chair back and started to rise. That’s when the little man stabbed me under the table with the dart. I was instantly dizzy and sank back into my chair.

“Rachel, what’s wrong?” I heard the little man said from a very long distance away as he pulled the dart from my leg.

I sat stupidly, unable to move, as the little man gathered up his things, put my packet of information into his satchel, and stood up. For a foolish moment, I thought he was going to leave me in the coffee shop, but he bent down and took my arm.

“Come on, Rachel. I know you’re in shock, but some air will do you good.”

He guided me out of the shop, down the block, and into a closed Italian restaurant. Another arm took mine, and I was hustled through the darkened eating area, through the empty kitchen, and into the back alley. A car waited there. I was pushed inside, where someone shoved up my sleeve to stab a needle into my arm. Time stopped.

 

* * *

 

Cold concrete against my cheek. Terrible pain, but receding. Head reeling. Bleeding, too much blood, not enough strength to recover – blessed event. Maybe I can die, after all. Falling into the abyss would be welcome.

New smell. Faint traces, first here, then gone. Tantalizing. Still gone. Wait – so faint, but here, in my nostrils, real. Her scent. The bitch who brought me this pain, the one who had to die –

No, no, that isn’t right, I remember her, her name is Rachel Osaka and I love her, woman with raven hair and ruby lips, sparks fly from her finger – no, damn it! I know her jade green eyes and the way she looks at me –

More drugs, more nightmares, more pain.

But she’s here.

I lock her memory away in my core. I shut my eyes. Let the pain come.

 

* * *

 

I woke up in a concrete cell. My clothes were gone. I hadn’t been raped that I could tell, though my sore arms told their tale of numerous injections. My vision was blurry. My head reeled, drugs’ aftermath. My left ribs hurt so badly that maybe they were broken. It hurt to breathe. A long, jagged cut ran around my left ribs from front to back. My neck was so bruised that it hurt to swallow. My left shoulder was swollen, bleeding. Had something – someone – bitten me?

My first thought was to trigger my GPS signal. But as soon as I clenched my jaw, a severe electric shock surged through me. It stopped only when I fought the spasms to turn the signal off. The concrete floor of the cell must be laced with metal. It took minutes to clear my thoughts from the jolt.

I didn’t hear anything beyond vague bumps and muffled voices so indistinct that I couldn’t tell whether they were male or female. The cell was so dark that my enhanced sight revealed only shadows. I smelled nothing but my own fear. There was no window, only a ceiling ventilation shaft too high to reach, even if I hadn’t had a metal collar around my neck. It was thin and light, more like a necklace, but I couldn’t break it or slip out of it. A chain ran from it to a recessed slot in the floor. Maybe it had delivered the electric shock. I had no options other than to sit.

For the first few hours, I was in absolute terror that Victor Creed was going to come through the door of my cell. The last time I’d seen him, he’d done his best to rape me, and I’d been flooded with his emotions from when he’d raped and killed Logan’s wife, Silver Fox. I expected him to succeed this time. But after a long while, maybe a couple of days, when Creed didn’t appear, I stopped being so afraid of that. The hours dragged into days, and days into… I don’t know. I never saw anyone – good, considering who’d kidnapped me – but keeping my dread of the unknown at bay was difficult. This was sensory deprivation, and with no distractions, my own thoughts became my torturers.

I was guided only by my biological rhythms. It didn’t take long to find the small hole in the floor that carried away wastes, and the faint odor from that receptacle didn’t vary. When I slept, I would wake to find a gelatinous cup of water and food wrapped in thin paper. Both cup and paper dissolved within an hour after I woke. I never saw how the food was delivered or when. I might have slept hours or minutes. My body had no sense of fullness or emptiness because the food was never enough, and my stomach soon settled into a constant low-grade ache. The food never varied, either. It was always the same sticks of bland something I dubbed People Chow. A sharp, medicinal aftertaste told me it was drugged, perhaps with vitamins and antibiotics because I didn’t seem to suffer ill effects from the poor food, worse sanitation, and enforced inactivity. There was probably a sedative in it, too, because I felt so lethargic and drifted off without rhyme or reason. I didn’t want to think about what else might be in it.

The only small, small bright point was that the voices didn’t bother me. I heard them just on the edge of perception, subtly louder when I slept. They were probably Weapon X’s attempt at brainwashing or subliminal suggestion. But my thoughts didn’t alter, because the psychic blocks I’d acquired months ago were too solid for the suggestions to take. I hoped an earful of creepy voices was all they’d try. I didn’t have the stamina or courage to withstand what Logan was going through.

My aching ribs, shoulder, and neck slowly eased, and the slash across my ribs scabbed over. I was always cold to the point of shivering, if not quite hypothermia, but I slept poorly and was always tired. I could have been here days, weeks, or longer. I eventually stopped wondering.

 

* * *

 

She’s still here. I smell her. She shouldn’t be here. She’s in danger – no, she is the danger. Needs to die. Needs to die to stop the pain. Jeopardizes everything.

What a load of manure –

Painpainpainpain –

Victor Creed’s an asshole. Torturing me and spewing his usual bullshit ain’t enough for him. When ripping my flesh doesn’t get the reaction he wants, he leans close and whispers. Things he’s done to Rachel. Things he will do. Things she likes him to do. That’s why I have to die. Rachel wants me dead so she can be with him. She’s behind this, why they try their damnedest to kill me –

Rachel is scared to death of that sadistic son of a bitch, I know it despite any amount of drugs and beatings because I can smell her even over the antiseptic reek of the damned men in the lab coats soaked with my blood, and she’s hurt and afraid. They’re messing with my head, messing with my head –

Go inward. Not the right moment, not the right moment. Soon. Go inward –

 

* * *

 

With all this empty time and nothing to do, I had a thousand chances to regret what I’d done to land me in this cell. Over time, despite the sedatives, I quietly went crazy – sometimes not so quietly. I cried, sang, screamed – anything to fill the emptiness with sound and the passage of time, with recognition that I was still human. But there was no deliverance from outside, not even notice. I realized that only when my desperation exhausted me. Then I considered that all things have an end, good or bad. I could lie here and go crazy, or I could keep myself sane in anticipation of that end.

I tried not to eat much of the People Chow, though there was little enough of that. I learned to pitch half of it into the privy hole as soon as I woke so I wasn’t tempted. My stomach protested loudly as my hunger increased, and the cold grew more penetrating. But my senses gradually cleared as my stomach increased its growling. I suspected that there was another drug in the air system, because I still would find myself waking without remembering that I’d fallen asleep. I still heard voices in my dreams, but didn’t remember what they’d said.

I took to meditating, first to retreat into happier thoughts, then to find purpose. I did tai chi, ballet, and yoga stretches to get warmer and calmer, even though the chain made it awkward. I refused to care whether the guy who manned the hidden camera sniggered at my efforts. I relived my moments with Logan, no matter how remote and distant those moments seemed now. I’d been so happy with him in Canada. I held onto that as I thought about my grandmother, my antique shop, my clients, my time at school, the happiness I’d shared with my parents….

I even thought about Victor Creed. He was in another cell somewhere, torturing Logan. What made a man do the things he did?

Something he’d said once... something about Logan taking care of me… he’d said that he’d see to it that Logan took care of me…

He hadn’t said that. I’d met him only once, and he’d never said that….

No. I vaguely recalled a second meeting, only fleeting. He’d loomed over me, his head as huge as a weather balloon, his hair distorted into a living snarl of blond snakes, and his black eyes reflecting only emptiness. The room had reeled – no, a long, bright corridor with a black square at the end of it –

It’d been the corridor outside this cell. He’d said it when I was brought here.

There’d been a scuffle in the hall, sharp words… Creed had confronted the two soldiers carrying me. I’d been barely conscious. Before anyone could stop him, he’d wrapped fingers around my neck and pulled me out of the soldiers’ hands, choking me, lifting me off my feet. He’d sniffed me, taking his time, and licked my face as if he sampled his next meal. My brain had flooded with his lust, hatred, and cruelty; and his talon had slit a thin red line around my ribs. He’d set his teeth on my shoulder, slowly biting down until his canines had pierced my skin and I’d smelled my own blood. I’d been too drugged to scream. He’d licked the blood from the wound, then bit harder for more. He’d stopped only when a third man with an officer’s stripes on his fatigues had rushed up with two more men in tow. He’d ordered Creed away from me, babbling that he didn’t want Creed’s scent on me because Logan would pick it up. Creed had dropped me to the floor like so much dead meat, then kicked me hard enough that my ribs had exploded in agony and I hadn’t been able to breathe. When the soldiers had shoved him away, Creed had snarled that he’d make sure Logan – no, he hadn’t said Logan; he’d said the Wolverine. He said he’d make sure the Wolverine took care of me no matter how I was marked. Then I’d been hustled into this cell, the chain had gone around my neck, the door had slammed, and I’d passed out.

My skin slithered.

Likely I was in the same military facility where Logan was held. Maybe Logan’s torturers had wiped his thoughts. Maybe they were priming him for something else. Any way I read it, Victor Creed’s promise that the Wolverine would take care of me was sinister at best. At worst, it was lethal.

 

* * *

 

Thin line, thin line between love and hate – no, no, between truth and lies. How far can I go to give them the truth they want and still keep it a lie inside? How much pain does it take before I believe what I’m told, before I believe that she needs to die, needs to die, I have to kill her, the bitch has got to die –

The drugs still come, but the chains come off. The chains come off because I am going to kill the bitch to stop the pain once and for all, once and for all, once and for fucking all –

They drag me out of the cell.

 

* * *

 

Despite my best intentions to stay mentally alert, I was so hungry and cold that my brain sank into a stupor before this numbing routine varied. I didn’t immediately register when the door to my cell scraped open, didn’t think to shut my eyes, and I was blinded as harsh fluorescent light flooded in. It took some seconds before I could see again. The door to my cell still stood open, and a man in a military uniform with a video cam hovered just inside the door. Before I reacted, he beckoned to someone behind him, and two other uniformed men wrestled a naked man between them and shoved him inside my cell. As the naked man sprawled face down, the soldier with the video cam focused it on me.

The man on the floor floundered to get to his hands and knees, as if he were too dizzy to find his balance. It was Logan. Though his skin was whole and unmarked, the blood, sweat, and filth coating him revealed that to be a gift of his healing factor, not his captors. His ribs stood out against his skin in the stark light. His long hair and beard were matted and hung in his face in greasy, bloody knots. He panted, drooling – there was blood mixed in the saliva – and he stank of drugged agony and rage. He trembled in exhaustion. Worst of all, when my eyes found his, I found no humanity, only feral, murderous madness. To see him like this… I found no words for the despair and fury that welled in me.

Unconsciously I reached a hand out to him. At the motion, Logan’s mad eyes tracked me, and his aggression rumbled deep in my chest as he subvocalized. He sniffed once. Sniffed twice. His muscles knotted as he gathered himself for attack. He fumbled for the chain that led to the ring around my neck and jerked it hard, pulling me towards him. I grabbed the chain and pulled back, but Logan was a lot stronger than I was.

“Logan, remember your training,” I whispered in Japanese as he yanked me closer. “A samurai is honorable. He is bound to protect those weaker than he, to resist the predations of evil…”

Logan’s subvocalizing grew deeper until he was audibly growling. There was no recognition in his eyes, no sign that he heard me. I gathered myself. I loved this man, but his mind was gone and his body had been subverted to do someone else’s bidding. I would die, but maybe I could ruin plans for a certain video.

“When they show you this, Logan-kyoshi,” I said in Japanese, “know that all it shows is their cowardice. Whatever happens, I know who and what you really are.”

Unhearing, Logan yanked the chain again to pull me within reach. I steeled myself for the claws that would surely appear, the death that would quickly follow –

One mad eye winked at me.

I froze.

Logan grabbed my ankle and dragged me towards him with a snarl, bearing his prominent canines. He staggered to his feet and hauled me up by the chain after him. He seized me around the neck and threw me against the wall near the door hard enough that I fell to my knees. I scrambled up as he popped all six claws. A shriek tore itself from my throat as he lunged –

At the last second, Logan veered away to bury both sets of claws in the video man’s gut. When he ripped them free, flesh splattered farther than I thought possible, and pieces of video cam ricocheted around me. Adrenaline surged through my body as Logan launched himself at the two men who’d dragged him into my cell, and they were dead within seconds. The savagery of his blows was inhuman, feral, horrific. Then he was back in my cell, his claws flashing in the harsh light. He reached for me –

I shut my eyes. The ring around my neck jerked, and Logan seized me by my shoulders, lifting me off my feet. He’d cut the chain a foot from the ring and dragged me down the corridor of the cellblock before I finally kicked my brain in gear.

“Awake now?” he snarled, running full out. Ahead of us was another guard, who lasted only a second before Logan’s devastating slash.

“Yes!” I got my feet under me and put my full attention to sprinting behind Logan.

“Do what I tell you, when I tell you!”

“Understood!” I shouted, not daring to use Logan’s code name, not knowing what that would trigger. From the fire in his eyes and the roar of his emotions, he wasn’t sentient by much. I panted to keep pace with him, hung back as he slashed through another man, then slithered around the remnants as best I could. When someone burst into the hall from a side passageway behind me, I punched and kicked hard, knocking him out of the fight until Logan had cleared the path before us.

A cellblock door loomed ahead. Logan exploded, slashing it to pieces with his claws, cutting enough of the rebar free for us to slither through. I grabbed the longest length that Logan cut free and followed him down another long hallway. Alarms shrieked. We sprinted faster. Logan threw himself at the three guards in front of the outer door. Others came behind me. I swung my rebar, connected with bone –

An inhuman roar echoed behind us. Twisting around, I found Victor Creed, Sabretooth, pounding down the corridor, talons reaching. He was in military camouflage rather than the barbarian getup I remembered, but he still sent a rush of cold fear up my spine and a slither of horror over my skin.

I didn’t think, didn’t consider, just willed my talents to their fullest. My fury sparked so high that I ran right at him with my piece of rebar. I swung it as hard as I could, right where Creed’s outstretched arm would be when my swing would be at its most forceful. My blow smashed his wrist, shoving his arm up, but his other hand swiped at me with talons outstretched. I’d already seen the blow coming, dropped under it, and kicked up, catching him hard in the groin with my momentum. He doubled up at the force of my blow, and I sprawled behind him. He scrabbled for me, but by the time I’d scrambled away, Logan had followed my attack with his own. He gutted Creed as savagely as he had the man with the video cam. He jumped over Creed floundering on the bloody floor, grabbed me, and threw me over Creed’s body. He slashed the soldier who had come up behind him and hacked at Creed again to keep him down. Then he launched himself after me, and we ran for the outer door.

Logan smashed the reinforced glass of the outer door over and over until it shattered. He grabbed me and ran through the shards into the night. He’d gone only ten feet before shots cracked and whined around us. He held me against his chest as he ran, protecting me from the bullets. Two hit him, staggering him, but a tree line loomed close and he plunged into the underbrush. Several bushes stabbed and tore at me, but I kept silent. We were still pursued.

Logan hurled me to the ground in a thicket and fell beside me.

“No GPS! Run! Don’t stop! I’ll find you!”

And he was off in another direction as swiftly as a wolf.

I did as he said. I got my feet under me, heaved air into my lungs, and stumbled forward into the pitch dark, away from where Logan had disappeared. It was a nightmare, struggling to pass through the underbrush, scraping and jabbing my bare feet on everything I stepped on, but I kept going, trying to pace myself so that I didn’t drop from exhaustion. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed, until I was almost too weary to put one foot in front of the other.

A rustle about thirty meters ahead drew me up. I quieted my breathing and shrank behind a tree. The movement was stealthy, measured, and too large to be an animal. I sank down on my heels as silently as possible, until the man came around the tree. It wasn’t Logan, so I punched my fist into his crotch without mercy. I heard a mechanical noise when the man doubled up, but I straightened quickly and slammed his face down into my knee so hard that I thought I’d broken my leg as well as his nose. One punch to his throat, two kicks to his kidneys, and he was down. I stripped the soldier’s tank top, pants, socks, and boots off. He had a trank gun, but it was empty – the discharge was probably what I’d heard when I first hit him – so I left it on the body when I fled.

I made only another twenty feet before my exhaustion overwhelmed me. Despite what Logan had told me, despite what I wanted, my legs wouldn’t hold me any longer. I sagged against a tree. Precious seconds tick-tick-ticked by, so I pulled on my pilfered clothes while I tried to suck in enough air to stop gasping. Then I pushed on, making steady progress away from the lights still faintly visible behind me.

The rustle of another body slipping through the woods grew louder. I took shelter behind another tree and hunkered down again. This one moved faster and more silently than a human. I sniffed, but I was upwind and couldn’t tell if it was Logan. It wasn’t, for the leg next to the tree was clad in camouflage –

I punched up again, but fingers closed around my wrist with the speed of the wind. It was Logan. I hadn’t been the only one to scavenge clothes from our pursuers – he was clad in boots and fatigue pants. He yanked me up, slung me on his back, and started running again. I held on as best I could, wrapping legs and arms around him to make less of an awkward weight of myself. He ran in an all out sprint, so clearly danger still pressed close.

“Hold your breath,” he growled as he waded into water.

I filled my lungs once, twice before Logan shoved me under the surface of a briskly flowing stream some four feet deep. He crowded me against a bank. Twice he tugged me after him. Just as my lungs were about to explode, he pulled my head barely above water. The rock above me shielded me from the sky and allowed me room to breathe, but only barely. I tried not to gasp as I sucked the sweetest air on the planet into my lungs.

He grabbed my head, drew it in front of his, and put one finger to his lips. When I nodded, he let me go. I reached out a hand to touch him, both to reassure myself and to sense what I could from him. He flinched when I rested my hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t pull away.

Logan trembled from more than exhaustion – his emotions were a maelstrom of rage and confusion. All his animal senses were engaged, but sentience warred with deep rage for control of his thoughts. He’d been repeatedly dosed with psychotropic drugs, physically tortured as well, both to such an extent that even his body struggled to overcome the aftereffects. I huddled in the water beside him until I lost track of time. Once I thought I heard distant voices and Logan stiffened beside me, but they faded.

I must’ve have dozed. Logan’s hand found mine on his shoulder and squeezed. I jerked awake, and forced myself to slip away from the bank after him. It was still dark, and we maneuvered down the streambed for some distance, slowly and quietly. I was so cold that I shivered almost uncontrollably, but I pushed myself on because I didn’t know who or what might be behind us.

After an hour of this, Logan ventured across the stream and away from it. Logan’s body seemed quieter, but his emotions still jangled chaotically, so I followed silently. I trusted him, but given how hard he’d been pushed, I didn’t risk what little self-control he’d managed to recover.

Time passed. The sun forced itself over the horizon, revealing that we traveled south. Logan’s eyes looked as if they were burned into his head, and he walked with a feral hunch.

“Logan,” I whispered – and immediately jabbed my calf on a sharp stick. I stumbled to my knees.

He started. When he swung around, his claws slid out and his eyes glared with hatred, but I didn’t flinch. He’d kept me safe for this long on instinct alone, and I trusted that. Sure enough, the rage in his eyes faded, his claws retracted, and he held up a hand. He sniffed, looked around us, and listened hard. I held still and focused on my own senses. Logan’s were more sensitive than mine, but we were both exhausted, and it didn’t hurt to double check each other.

After a long minute, he nodded and offered me a tentative hand up. He looked so wary that I took his hand only briefly to pull myself up. Again I was flooded with the terrifying and violent emotions from the depths of his interrogation, and I flinched. That drew Logan to flinch as if I’d hurt him. I released his hand.

“Thanks,” I said quietly, working not to show any fear.

“Sorry. I was rough. Last night.” His voice was a rasp, as if he hadn’t used it in months.

“We’re alive. Sometimes that isn’t done with a lot of pretty.”

He was too tired to grimace, but he nodded. “Got that right. Glad you got yourself some gear, but you look like hell.”

“You don’t look like a white knight, yourself. I feel how hard they pushed you.”

His laugh was nearly silent and impossibly weary. “Learned a long time ago. Make it look like they’d driven me harder than they had. But this was close.” He met my eyes, winced, but forced himself to look at me. “I know who you are, Rachel. Still have you in my head… my way, not what they wanted.”

“Weapon X, you mean.”

He nodded.

I swallowed. “They sent me a video of you being tortured, Logan. Victor Creed was c-c-cutting you. I was told to dismantle the distribution net I’d set up to send out the dirt I had on them. I did, but I was kidnapped when I went to the information drop, so someone clearly wanted something else from me. They wanted you to kill me, didn’t they?”

Logan hesitated and seemed to marshal himself. “Lab guys… white coats. Creed, too –“ He flicked me a glance that was pure fury, then he visibly forced himself to calm. “He said he’d – you were –” He shook his head as if to rid himself of the memory. “Not right, any of it, maybe. Did he hurt you?”

I swallowed. “Once. His handlers kept him away after that.”

I showed Logan the bite mark on my shoulder, the slice across my ribs. The wounds were mostly healed, but the imprints of Creed’s canines were still palely visible on my shoulder. Logan tensed and started to growl.

“Did you want him to touch you?” he snarled, baring his teeth.

Unbidden, I remembered Silver Fox’s terror as she’d died under Creed’s hands. I remembered my own terror, a pale shadow of hers. Anyone who thought any woman desired or merited Creed’s treatment deserved a lobotomy. But Logan didn’t know what was truth or lies yet, so I quelled my anger. Still, I couldn’t suppress a shiver as I thought about Creed licking my cheek.

“No, Logan. No. Never.”

Logan visibly relaxed, even looked chagrined as he pointed to his head. “Sorry. Not… right up here. They tried to make you someone I needed to kill. Most of that… didn’t work. But I won’t be easy to be around for a while.”

I reached out to him again, as slowly as before. He let me take his hand and rub it between mine, and I willed whatever intent I could muster into his body. “How can I help?”

“Don’t startle me. I’m… not completely in control yet.”

Indeed, his body trembled under my touch. I kept rubbing his hand slowly, hoping that the slight contact would encourage Logan’s endorphins to flow, easing him. “If it’ll help, I keep my distance. But trust your senses, Logan. They know what’s true and what isn’t. Remember my scent, the way I move, my voice, our time together. You know the truth of those.”

He relaxed a hair and almost smiled. “Right now, you’re filthy rank, darlin’.”

He spoke nothing but truth. Between the two of us, we made a rancid combination of sweat, blood, wet hair, and mud. Despite how tired I was, I giggled. At the sound, Logan’s eyes seemed to take on more life, and his smile broadened. His body visibly relaxed.

“Yeah. I remember you, Rachel Osaka.”

I smiled and squeezed his hand. “Good.”

“We gotta keep moving. Not safe yet.”

“Where are we?”

“Where I always come after a mission. Location is one of the first things they wipe. I don’t have a lot to go on.” As we started walking again, he thought hard for several seconds. “We’re in Alberta. I remember.”

“Victor Creed will come after us, won’t he?”

Logan’s body leaped back to its earlier tension as he turned on me. His claws flashed in the sun and he tensed as if he wanted to bury them in my body.

“Do you want him to?” he snarled, taking a step towards me.

“God, Logan, no!” I hastily backed away several steps and held up my hands in surrender, but couldn’t suppress a shudder. I flashed to the lust Creed had felt when he’d killed Logan’s wife, when he thought about doing that to me. Logan stared in such confusion, but I couldn’t tell him what I’d felt – ever. “Can’t you smell what I feel? He was going to kill me! Do you think I wanted it?”

Logan’s shock was rampant on his face. He forced himself to calm again, flexing his hands to retract his claws and backing up a step. “Sorry – I’m sorry, Rachel. Their shit in my head. Likely, he’ll come after us. He’s set hooks in us both. And he tracks as well as I do.”

I took a deep breath and pitched my voice softer, lower. “So there isn’t much point in trying to hole up somewhere. Exhaustion’s going to be a problem.”

Logan’s eyes were haunted and his voice was rough. “I’m not going back there. I’ll carry you when you can’t go any farther.”

Logan was so driven that I worried about him losing what little control he’d regained. I didn’t have his physical strength, but I could help him keep his psychic balance. Our survival depended on it. I swallowed my fear of Creed and straightened out of my defensive hunch. “I’m not going back, either,” I said firmly. “I can go a long while yet.”

He calmed, nodded. “Take point. I won’t startle as much if I keep you in sight – wait. Come here.”

I hesitated, not sure what he wanted.

He didn’t smile. In fact, he looked apprehensive. “Not gonna hurt you, Rachel. Just want to get that damn’ chain off. Had my fill of ‘em.”

My neck was raw from days of chafing, and the dangling chain banged painfully against my body. But Logan was so close to the edge that it’d take only a second of weakness for him to slice me rather than the chain.

He’d kept me safe so far.

“That’d be a relief,” I agreed.

Logan got down on one knee. Gingerly, awkwardly, as if he didn’t quite trust himself, he beckoned me down to put my throat against his thigh. He turned the collar until the fastener was against the side of my neck. He brushed my hair out of the way, and gently pushed my head down and away from the fastener.

“Don’t move. Gonna cut through by your ear. One claw.”

“Okay.”

I shut my eyes, because even though I couldn’t see what he was doing, I felt it though his leg. His body flexed as he drew his arm back, and I heard a claw slide out. His leg tensed, the ring around my neck jerked, and he grunted as his claw hit the metal. His claw retracted. He took the ring in his hands and flexed to bend it wide. He eased it from my neck carefully. His hands settled on my shoulders and drew me up.

He was shaking again, and his expression was tense. I eased his hands from my shoulders, and drew them between my palms gently. Inside he seethed between his own feelings and the murderous overlay that our captors had tried to implant.

“Thank you,” I said quietly before I eased my hands away. “It’s okay, Logan. You’re doing fine.”

He swallowed and nodded. “Need to ask you somethin’ else.”

“What?”

He shut his eyes, took a breath as if he were trying to remember how to talk, or what he wanted to ask me. “Did they tag you?”

I stilled, thinking about Creed licking my face. I refused to shudder. “Tag… what does that mean?”

“Tracking beacon. Did they inject you with a tracking beacon?”

I relaxed a hair. “So… do I have any wounds I can’t account for?”

He nodded. “Yeah. That.”

I did what checks I could. “Not that I can see, but...”

When I pointed over my shoulder at my back, he nodded. He touched me carefully, and I held still under the rush of his emotions. The turmoil was lessening, wasn’t as frenzied, and calmed further as he ran his hand over my skin.

“Sorry,” he warned as he checked my backside. “They usually put a tag in a deep muscle.”

I smothered a laugh. “And here I thought my filthy rankness turned you on.”

That got a chuckle out of him. “Then I oughta be drivin’ you wild, darlin’. I can hardly smell you over my own stench. Looks like you’re clear.”

“Good. What about you?”

He shook his head. “Things like that don’t last long. My body kicks ‘em out. I feel ‘em move.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Logan.”

As Logan made to move off, I collected the ring and the trailing bit of chain. I didn’t want to leave anything that would allow someone to know we’d come this way.

“Logan, do you think there’s a tag in this?”

I held the chain and broken collar out to him. He looked at it, shook his head.

“Can you bend the ring straight, with a loop at the end to hold the chain? It’d be easier to carry, and it’d give me a weapon if we run into trouble.”

He nodded. “Good idea. Give me the pieces.”

Logan was so strong that he made quick work of what I’d asked. I refused to think about what he’d do if he couldn’t overcome the mental tampering he’d been subject to, or how long I’d last if he couldn’t. I hoped that the more time that passed, the better his control would get. That also assumed that we’d be able to keep our freedom.

“Here.” Logan passed me the flail he’d fashioned from the collar and the chain.

I gave it a practice sweep. “Very medieval,” I said, trying to smile. “Which way?”

He pointed south. I moved off slowly, and after a moment, Logan followed.

 

* * *

 

Maybe I wasn’t so smart to put Rachel on point. I thought it would keep me from forgetting she was there. But having her in sight was worse, because I spent more time fighting what the drugs and torture had tried to make me believe. The more time that passed, the easier it was to do that, but I’d been harried for more days than I remembered, and exhaustion made it hard to know what was real and what wasn’t. Still, I had my version of Rachel in my head, if more remote than I liked. Rachel herself had helped me, because despite everything she trusted that I could balance the torture against reality.

If she’d known what they’d done to me, she wouldn’t have been so trusting. I didn’t think about that because it took strength that I was rapidly running out of.

The upside to my body is that my healing factor acts constantly. Just to counter general wear and tear is no big deal. But here’s the downside – the adamantium on my bones puts a huge burden on my immune system, and it takes a lot of calories for my healing factor to counter that. After so many days of abuse, then this all-out retreat, my body consumed itself faster than it rebuilt. Last night, avoiding pursuit had been the priority. Now it was food. One more reason to keep moving south. That was away from where we’d been imprisoned, and some shred of memory told me that we’d hit a river in that direction. A river meant fish, and fish meant the protein I desperately needed.

Sure enough, in another hour I picked up the sound of water. In a few bare words, I told Rachel, and even though she was exhausted, she picked up right away on what that meant. Her gaze was worried, and I was both grateful and ashamed that the worry was for me rather than her. I hadn’t given her much to earn that concern, as harshly as I’d treated her –

“Logan, you got us out of there despite everything,” she said softly, her hand on my arm. I was so tired that I hadn’t noted her approach, and I flinched hard enough that the first four inches of my claws slid out. She should have backed off when I spasmed, but she met my eyes calmly, with as much courage as foolhardiness. Damned naïve empath, she didn’t listen to what her own talents told her –

“Stop, Logan,” she asked, rubbing my arm gently. At her touch, endorphins insinuated their way through my body, and it was easier to find calm, to concentrate on the gentleness of her touch and the memories that aroused. “You’re exhausted. Let it go. I know you need protein. I’ll use my talent to catch some fish. You watch out for us and I’ll get the fish.”

I almost smiled as I sheathed my claws. “Darlin’, I’ve been catchin’ fish for decades before you were born.”

She did smile. “You’ve been smelling out trouble for that long, too. We need that as much as the fish.”

“True enough. Go for the fish. We can switch off after a while.”

“If I can’t get any, is that it?” Her mouth twitched into a slight smile. “Well, let’s see.”

She handed me the flail I’d made for her, moved off into the water about knee deep, and stood still. Her eyes took on that sunlit glow that meant her talent was actively engaged, so I concentrated what little energy I had left on checking for pursuit. About ten minutes later, I heard a splash, and she had a good-sized juvenile salmon in her hands. She waded towards me with a smile, offering the fish.

“Sushi. Have at.”

“Hang on,” I graveled, and popped a claw to swiftly gut and fillet the fish. I held out one side of the meat to her. She wolfed it down almost as fast as I did. That’s when I realized how thin she was, how dark the circles were around her eyes, how her body never stopped shivering. Weapon X might’ve spared her what they’d done to me, but hunger, cold, and fear had been her companions for as long as pain had been mine. She swallowed the last of the fish, bent to rinse her hands, and waded back out.

Rachel caught four or five in rapid order, cutting the time between catches as her talent figured out how to see where the fish would be. Even after her belly was full, she kept at it until she’d taken another six. I bolted every scrap of them before my body finally stopped shaking. I might have actually tasted the last one.

“I got a couple more,” Rachel offered, holding them out. I had them filleted and down my throat before they’d stopped moving. Her lips curved in a half smile at my dispatch. “I’ve got it down now. How many more would you like?”

I scanned around us quickly. “I won’t turn down anything you get in the next ten minutes. We’ve been here long enough that we gotta move.”

She waded back in without protest, and got six more in as many minutes. I got her to eat a couple, albeit small ones, and I finished off the rest. I was still tired to my bones, but I had a lot more substance between my belly and my backbone now, and felt better for it. When I looked at Rachel now, I felt the torture’s compulsion only as an annoying intellectual exercise, and not the consuming urge to protect myself from an enemy. That took away a lot of the mental effort I’d had to make earlier.

“Damn’ sight better,” I breathed. “I’ll take you fishin’ anytime you want to go, darlin’.”

“Glad to oblige. You look better, even if you don’t smell better.”

I actually chuckled. “Hiya, pot. This is kettle.”

A little of the tightness eased around Rachel’s eyes, and her smile was gratified. “The zombie wakes.”

“You’re right more’n you’re not,” I admitted. “C’mon. Chuck the guts in the river, then we gotta go.”

We collected the last remnants of our hasty meal and pitched them out into deeper water. Then we followed the river downstream. I kept us moving for a couple of hours. Rachel didn’t complain, but she started to stumble on the rocky shore. She’d been moving for close to twenty-four hours, and was close to not being able to move at all. I don’t remember when I last slept, but I made good on my promise to her. When she stumbled again, I put out an arm to keep her from falling, then wordlessly picked her up.

“Logan –” she protested.

“I got you covered, Rachel.”

She tried to push out of my arms. “Put me down. I won’t hold you up.”

“No, you won’t,” I agreed, letting her push, but not putting her down. “You done good, darlin’. Take a load off for a while.”

It was a mark of how tired she was that she didn’t argue. She did persuade me to let her ride piggyback, so we continued down the river for another couple of hours. At that point, Rachel insisted on getting down. I obliged because I was too tired not to.

“You’re exhausted, Logan. Let’s stop for a few minutes. We can try for some more fish.”

I sniffed, looked around us, and listened hard. “Not long, eh? Gotta keep moving.”

We clambered down and edged cautiously to the river, where we both relieved ourselves. I didn’t like fouling the water, but I liked leaving trace of our passage even less. Rachel was glad of the chance to rinse off, even if she didn’t have any soap. By the time she’d rubbed a little humanity back into her face and arms, I’d speared a couple of fish, and she moved to another eddy to add her catch to our meal. As before, I swiftly separated meat from offal and bones, and Rachel tore into her share without hesitation. We had water enough, so in only a few minutes we were ready to move on.

Once it got dark, I took the lead so that my better night vision could pick out a path. Even if Rachel didn’t see as well as I did at night, she was well able to follow me confidently and with little noise. At one point, I held her back and subvocalized a warning to the animal that padded softly towards us. The male cat hesitated, but soon backtracked away and veered west.

“What was that?” Rachel whispered.

“Lynx.”

I held a brisk pace through the chilly night. Rachel was a trooper and followed without complaint. But eventually she stumbled more than my carrying her would remedy, and shivered uncontrollably in the cool night air. We climbed up to a rocky outcropping that was visible only because it blotted out the stars. I found a bare overhang big enough for us both to fit under. I ignored the bullshit in my head insisting that Rachel was a threat I needed to put down, and drew my lady down behind me, screening her from eyes in the night. She showed no hesitation in curling up with me, humbling me with her trust. I lay on my back and she huddled close, gradually warming. She stroked my arm slowly for a few seconds and started to tease me about how bad we smelled, only to fall asleep in mid-sentence. I would have smiled, but I didn’t stay awake long enough to do so.

 

* * *

 

When I woke up, it was full daylight. Logan was still curled next to me, sleeping hard. I lay still, both chagrined at the length of time we’d slept unguarded, yet relieved at how much better I felt. I couldn’t go back to sleep, because my bladder was uncomfortably full. I eased from behind Logan without waking him, and rose quietly to head for the river. Just in case, I took the flail.

Before I moved away, I carefully scanned for sense of anyone, but found nothing. I flitted quickly to the water’s edge and dealt with my body’s complaints. I thought about catching some fish, but decided it was smarter to head back to the rocks. We stood a better chance together than apart.

Halfway back, my senses screamed. Someone drew near. I scooped up a couple of rocks and ran back to where we’d slept – then spotted the first figure two hundred meters upstream. Logan was gone, I hoped already alert to the danger. Sure enough, behind the trio of regular soldiers strode Victor Creed, already grinning. He pointed at me and made an obscene gesture followed by a slash across his neck.

First terror, then fury surged through me, raising the hair all over my body. I’m not a soldier. I’m not a fighter, for all the martial arts classes I’ve taken over the years. I’m just an antiques dealer. The psychopath striding toward me had helped to torture my lover past all humanity, nearly past all survival or sanity. I still had nightmares about when he’d kidnapped, shredded, and nearly killed me. But when I thought of how he’d licked my face, how Logan had looked at me with such contempt when he named Creed, something inside me snarled. I no longer cared how big and menacing Victor Creed seemed to be.

I flexed my jaw to trigger my GPS beacon. I also triggered the dead man’s switch for that computer in Belgium. In nanoseconds, the backup files Daniel and I had hidden away replicated through cyberspace faster than any human disease, carrying everything I’d collected about Weapon X and its organization back into the world. I narrowed my gaze and let my talents flood me with sensations. I cold-bloodedly studied the auras of the four men who stalked towards me, cataloging weapons, attitudes, body language, potential positioning over the next several seconds. I thought about how vicious Logan had been to break us out of prison, and I steeled myself to be just as hard now. I took up a stand in front of the rocks where Logan and I had slept. I swung the flail in my right hand back and forth slowly, and the rocks in my left hand were ready to fly. Maybe I was about to die, but I’d make the four of them work for it.

“Little Rachel,” Creed crooned as he walked toward me. “You don’t look happy to see me.”

The best thing to say to Victor Creed was nothing at all. He hated that, because he needed fear and anger to react to. I met his eyes only to dismiss him, and I went back to considering which one of the other three I’d tackle first.

“We already got the Wolverine. I kicked his ass so hard that he won’t wake up until he’s back in his cage,” Creed pressed with a growl. “Looks like the animal left you for the rest of us.”

That was such a poor lie that it didn’t bear noting. I decided on the man on the far right, who looked a hair shorter, a hair weaker, a hair less comfortable, was my best target. I gathered myself because a fifth person lurked above and behind me in the rocks, downwind from the soldiers…

As my senses had warned me, Logan’s leap carried him from the rocks into the man on the far left. I threw the first rock as hard as I could at my mark, the second at the man next to him, then sprinted towards my mark just as Logan’s claws flashed. I didn’t see Logan hit his target because I was too busy hitting mine. My rock smashed his face and my foot caught him full in the chest before he could bring his pistol up to fire. I whacked him across the face with the flail – then did the same to the third soldier – and followed that with my favorite punches to soft tissue to leave him gasping – dying – through a crushed windpipe. I scrabbled for his trank pistol and fired it at the third soldier as he charged me, dropping him instantly. That left Creed, and Logan had already engaged him. I ran closer to empty the rest of the trank darts into Creed’s body. It didn’t knock him out – in fact, he was able to shake off Logan long enough to rip painful scratches down my leg – but it slowed him enough for Logan to hamstring him. After a few choice kicks, I dashed back to the nearest downed soldier and grabbed an interesting set of hand cuffs – clearly meant for Logan – and another full trank pistol. I charged back with the pistol and emptied it as fast as I could into Creed again. That slowed him again, long enough for Logan to yank his arms behind him. When he cursed and fought, my rage flared, and I stomped and kicked hard enough for Logan to wrestle the handcuffs on him. Then I exchanged my flail for one of the soldiers’ pistols that shot something more lethal than tranks. I switched off the safety, chambered the first round, and brought it to bear on Victor Creed’s right eye.

“It’ll bounce off his skull,” Logan warned me with a growl.

I didn’t change my aim. “Not if I put it through the back of his eye socket. It’ll rattle around inside his head. Assuming there’s anything in there, that ought to hurt.”

Logan’s chuckle was low. “Good point. See if you can find another set of those cuffs.”

Creed wasn’t so amused, but I didn’t wait for him to mouth the expected taunts, or for Logan to punch him for the insult. I backed up until I found a prone body in my peripheral vision, then I eased off the gun to search the soldier’s gear. I found more cuffs and passed them to Logan. What Logan and I did to get the cuffs on Creed’s ankles was brutal only if you didn’t know what Logan had been through or what he could have done. Once Creed was bound hand and foot, I searched the other dead soldiers, and soon found a cell phone. A quick check told me it was a private line, not a military-issued set, so I flipped it open and keyed a number.

“It’s Omen. Can you get a fix on me?”

“Triangulating now,” Hank McCoy answered quickly. “Your signal just popped up a couple of minutes ago. Alberta, Canada – got you, Omen. Do you need help?”

“A lift would be good. Logan’s here. We’ve got Sabretooth contained for the moment, but Weapon X is in pursuit.”

“Scrambling now. Is Wolverine near enough to talk?”

“Stick to Logan. He’s had a rough time.”

“Understood. Put him on.”

I stood up and met Logan’s eyes. I switched to Japanese. “I tripped my GPS as soon as I spotted this lot. Beast has us on scan, and our ride’s coming.”

“Turn it off,” Logan breathed in Japanese as he took the phone. What Sabretooth said wasn’t printable, but I ignored him as I complied with Logan’s request.

While Logan talked to Hank, I circled behind Creed and grabbed a handful of his hair. I pressed the flat of my other hand to the side of his face, the same place where he’d licked me. His violent emotions flooded me, at first unfocused, conflicting, multilayered, confusing. How did one man with so much hatred keep from exploding? He reared his head up, trying to bite. Then he thrust a sharp, clear recollection at me of his lust when Silver Fox had died, as vicious as a physical slap. I shoved that aside and read the possibilities of the next hour. Some were terrifying – then there were the ones that made my skin crawl. When he reared again, I slammed my elbow into his nose, leaving blood. I let his hair go, and circled around where he could see me.

“Did you know that I can tell the future with just a touch?” I said quietly, calmly, holding up the hand I’d pressed to his face. Logan closed the phone and looked at me quizzically, but I kept my eyes on Creed. “You won’t like your end, Victor Creed. And it comes a lot sooner than you think.”

“After yours, bitch, I promise you.”

“Don’t make promises you won’t keep. You’ll see.”

I got another load of profanity for my performance, but the trick to sticking a performance is follow-through. I kept my calm as we stripped the dead soldiers of anything useful. A shirt was welcome to cover my filthy tank top, and Logan stuffed a bandoleer full of ammunition into a gear bag with the rest of our take. He passed me the bag and hefted a pair of rifles.

Creed kept swearing and taunting, but I refused to let his words register. Finally, though, he earned a kick from Logan that was hard enough to double him up. “Shut it, Creed. And since you won’t do it yourself, lemme help you.”

Logan took a handful of shredded camouflage shirt and jammed it into Creed’s mouth. Then he beckoned me after him. I shouldered two more rifles and the bag and followed.

 

* * *

 

I kept Rachel moving as swiftly as she could manage, still moving south. We weren’t home free yet, but I savored satisfaction as we retreated. When Rachel had faced down Creed, at first I’d thought she was foolhardy, even if she’d sensed where I was. Then her rage and fear had hardened into determination, and her eyes had blazed a bright golden green bright enough to be visible to anyone. Why had I ever thought she felt anything but terror and loathing for Creed? Even though she’d had only a bent piece of steel and a couple of rocks in her hands, she’d taken down two combat-trained soldiers fast, with as much ruthlessness as they would’ve shown her. Then she’d pumped Creed so full of tranks that even his metabolism was overloaded for a few seconds, and I’d been able to get the cuffs on him. She’d even gone toe to toe with him in the head games department and come out ahead.

All in all, Rachel had done herself proud. She’d hate herself once she had time to think about it.

When we’d gone a klick down the river, I ditched most of the guns and gear we’d hauled away. It was too much for us to carry, much less use, but we’d gotten it out of the hands of whoever might still be alive and able to tail us. Those cuffs Rachel had found were adamantium, but I wouldn’t give Creed the luxury of assuming he was down for long. He still breathed, and that alone meant he was still dangerous.

“Tell me somethin’,” I graveled when I took a lot of the gear from Rachel.

Her expression was still grim as she passed me her two rifles. “What?”

“Did you tell Creed the truth back there, or were you just messin’ with him?”

“What? Oh, that.” Rachel met my eyes with a sly smile, but anger lurked behind it. “Yes.”

I grinned as I turned the discarded guns into scrap. “Okay, you were messin’ with him. How much truth did you see to back that up?”

Her sly smile faded. What replaced it was a lot more apprehensive. “I see the future in layers, Logan. Nothing is truth until someone makes a choice.”

“And some choices are harder than others, eh?”

She didn’t look at me when she nodded.

“Fair enough. Gimme the bag.”

I quickly sorted out what we were going to keep – a couple of pistols, a knife, and a lot of ammo magazines. I gave Rachel the knife to stash in her boot, and I stuffed the rest into the gear bag for her to carry across her shoulder. I slung both of the rifles I wanted to keep over my shoulder, then I put Rachel on my back and set out at a dead run.

“We got at least an hour before the Blackbird’s in town,” I panted as I ran. “We need distance from where you triggered your GPS. Don’t want anyone besides the Furball to home in on us.”

Rachel wound herself around me to lessen the awkwardness of her bulk, and she kept the gear bag steady so it didn’t add too much sway to my stride. I did a fast forty minutes before the sound I’d been waiting for throbbed in my ears. We found brush to hide in before the military copter flew over. But once we were out of its line of sight, I pulled Rachel on. We needed to find a place to defend long enough for the Blackbird to find us. I explained this quickly to Rachel, and she doggedly fought to match my pace. There wasn’t much to find until we came upon a tangle of flood debris at the edge of the river. There must’ve been a landslide or avalanche, because in the heart of the shattered tree trunks and branches were a couple of big granite boulders. The broken wood had swept around the rocks and piled high around three sides. Only the downstream side was low, but there was enough space between the rocks and the wood for us to squirm into the middle. I pulled a couple of screening branches over the top, and we were out of casual line of sight from above.

“Now what?” Rachel panted.

I unslung the rifles and maneuvered the gear bag off Rachel’s shoulder. “Sit and wait. The longer we’re not spotted, the longer we’ll last. Soon as we start shootin’, they’ll know where we are. When the Blackbird gets close, I’ll tell you to trigger your GPS again. You know how to fire one of these?”

To my regret, Rachel took one of the rifles and a box ammo magazine. “It’s a knockoff of the thirty-shot Russian AK-74, probably from the Middle East. This one will do both single shot and multi-fire. Safety’s on now.”

I nodded as she loaded the magazine with practiced ease. “Can you use it as well as you can load it?”

Rachel knew what I meant. This wasn’t shooting someone with a trank, throwing a rock, or kicking someone in the balls. Her eyes darkened, but she nodded. “I know what Victor Creed will do to us both if we go back there, Logan. I can’t face that.”

I gave her a loaded pistol and a spare magazine. “Don’t shoot unless I tell you or I’m down. Roger, Omen?”

“Roger, Wol –“ she broke off. She bit her lip and looked at me, waiting.

“’S’okay, kid. Beast told me what you said. Most of the overlay went once I got some sleep.”

Rachel’s smile was as bright as her eyes, and she put her arms around me to hug me hard. “I’m so glad, Logan-san. No matter what happens, thank you for everything.”

“You keep that up, I’m gonna think I should keep the filthy rank,” I warned as I hugged her back.

Rachel’s chuckle was silent. “Not me,” she whispered as she let me go and stowed her pistol in the back of her belt. When she took up the rifle, she followed my example and chambered a round. “If we get out of here, I’m dragging both of us into the nearest shower.”

“Not if, darlin’. When.”

She nodded, but without conviction, and she kept her eyes on her AK-74. I hoped her talent hadn’t told her something, but there was no time to ask. I smelled people approaching, heard their faint steps. I put my finger to my lips to cut the chatter. Rachel kept her head down because her eyes were blazing so brightly that she didn’t want them to give us away. After some minutes, she touched my leg, pointed upstream, and held up four fingers. She lowered two fingers and pointed the remaining two to the right. She lowered her fingers, then raised one, and pointed left. Finally, she lowered her finger, raised it again, and pointed straight ahead.

That was clear. Four came from upstream; two angled right, one angled left, and one came straight at us. I craned my head to peer through the brush, and spotted the first one round the bend in the river upstream. I touched Rachel’s thigh, telling her to hold. She froze, hardly breathing. I stilled beside her.

They didn’t know where we were, so each step was cautious, wary. Creed wasn’t with them, so maybe the cuffs had put him out of commission for a few more minutes. One of the soldiers paced not ten meters from us, but he went by, oblivious. I hoped that stayed true as he passed downwind, because even his nose should be able to pick up the reek both Rachel and I gave off. But he kept going, and so did two of his buddies. The fourth one, the one Rachel said approached us straight on, went around, and Rachel’s touch on my leg held me still. All four moved downstream cautiously.

Rachel’s hand tightened on my leg. “Blond on the left,” she whispered. “He’s going to run back here–”

I eased my rifle up. “If I fire more than once, hit your GPS.”

Sure enough, just as Rachel said, he turned, looked around himself, and started running towards our brush pile. I squeezed off one shot and dropped him some forty meters away. The shot spun him around so that the other three didn’t know where the shot had come from, so they didn’t target on us right away. They scattered looking for cover, and I let them go, marking where they hid.

Rachel’s hand touched my leg again. She held up four more fingers and pointed upstream. I craned my neck again, spotted them coming around the bend –

The Blackbird screamed overhead. It was low and slow, searching for us.

“GPS,” I murmured.

“On.”

“Hang tough, Omen. It’s gonna get hot. Take upstream.”

Her fingers tightened on her rifle, and she shifted carefully to point it upstream. Just in time. They’d picked up Rachel’s GPS, because one of them shouted, pointing right at us, and the rest broke into a run. The three downstream also ran back towards us, dodging in and out of the trees. I winged one of them and took another one outright.

“Fire at will,” I told Rachel. She gulped, but she also squeezed off a shot that took out one of the soldiers approaching from upstream.

The men still standing ran for cover. One of them wormed well up the bank, high enough that he could fire almost right on top of us. I put myself between Rachel and his line of sight, catching one of his bullets before I could return fire. It took me a good four or five shots to take him out, and I took a second bullet to do it. The exchange distracted me enough that I didn’t immediately notice when Rachel’s fear spiked high enough to overwhelm our rancid stench. She looked calm, methodically firing one shot, then another, then another, then another –

Sabretooth strode down the riverbank followed by another fifteen soldiers. He barely recoiled when each of Rachel’s shots hit him. He pointed at our hiding place, and bared his teeth in a wide feline grin. Rachel’s fear spiked again –

I swallowed a curse. Once I’d taken down the two remaining soldiers downstream, I positioned my rifle beside Rachel’s. Her eyes were so bright that it hurt to look at them, but she didn’t panic.

“Eye socket,” she whispered, and I nodded.

I don’t know which of us made the shot, but it exploded into Creed’s head and he dropped. From the way his body twitched, Rachel had been right about what the bullet would do to his brain once it got in and found no way out. When he fell, the soldiers with him scattered to cover. Rachel ejected her empty magazine, rammed another one home, and twisted to look for her next target. Her face was a white mask.

I was thankful that the Blackbird chose that moment to hover overhead. Even better, the soldiers arrayed against us froze in place.

 _Wolverine, Omen, it’s Charles_ , I heard in my head _. I’m holding your pursuers. Beast is going to drop a line to bring you up. Stand ready._

 _Wolverine and Omen standing by_ , I replied. I turned to Rachel as she watched a thin line attached to a rescue collar snake down from the jet. I expected her to drop her rifle, but she instead she bolted out of the flood debris and ran for Victor Creed. The jet kicked up a lot of wind, but I caught intermittent smells of such fear and rage that they could have been mine.

She was going to finish Creed.

Maybe I should let her, because Creed deserved it. But I didn’t want Rachel to live with that.

Did that mean that I wanted her to look over her shoulder for him the rest of her life? Maybe she’d rather live with knowing she’d put a stop to his terrorism.

He was as hard to kill as I was. There was no guarantee that whatever she did was permanent.

No good answers, no good answers... those choices Rachel had talked about. All I had to go on was how I felt when I gave in to the beast.

I cursed and ran after her.

Halfway to Creed, she pitched her rifle and pulled out the knife we’d scavenged. Her scent flooded with revulsion as she steeled herself to be as ruthless as the man sprawled before her. I grabbed her free hand and pulled her away from Creed’s still-twitching body.

“Let me go, Logan! This has to be done, once and for all!”

“He’s down, Rachel –”

“He’s been down before, hasn’t he?” she shouted. “I can’t live with the prospect of that psycho taking his sadistic shots at me for the rest of my life! I’m not immortal like he is! I’m not as strong as he is, so the only way to protect myself is to kill him! So let me go!”

She twisted and jerked her arm, trying to break my grasp, but I held on. “Killing him doesn’t stop Weapon X!”

“But it stops him!”

I pulled her close enough that I caught her other wrist and squeezed to make her drop the knife, but she refused to let go. I’d have to hurt her to get that blade out of her hand. “He’s not worth making a killer out of you!”

“I already am one!” she howled. “I don’t want to be; I’ve never wanted to be! But I’ve had to be to survive! My survival is worth it, and so is yours!”

How could I answer that, especially when she was right?

 _Rachel, it’s Charles. I can offer you another way,_ whispered in my thoughts.

Rachel looked up at the plane. Her emotions surged through Chuck to me. Overwhelming, all-consuming terror had flooded her during Creed’s attacks –

Sonofabitch –more than Rachel’s terror and exhaustion blinded me. I got full measure of the defilement that batters a woman under assault that a man can’t directly comprehend – in stereo, because Creed had force-fed her his emotions from years ago when he’d raped and murdered Silver Fox. Rachel had felt my sweet wife die and the charge it had given the bastard who’d murdered her.

“He’s not after you! It isn’t your life!” she howled. I heard the words echo in Chuck’s thoughts.

_No, it isn’t. And I can see to it that it won’t be yours, either._

She hesitated, hesitated, looking at me with eyes blazing like fire, wanting to believe but knowing better…

I let Rachel go. Maybe Chuck could do what he said, but I’ve never been one to gamble on what might be. I let a single claw slide out to match her knife, and we did what Rachel wanted to do in two quick motions. She took a handful of Creed’s long hair and ran into the river to pitch his head in the deepest part, sinking to her knees in the water, watching the ripples that slowly grew and faded. The light in her eyes blazed a moment longer, then died, leaving only misery. Then I stood witness while Rachel tried to contain what we’d done and failed.

 _That wasn’t necessary,_ Chuck admonished me as I drew Rachel into my arms and let her howl. I hoped her psychic scream deafened the telepath up in the jet and tore at him the way her physical anguish did me.

 _What we’ve been through wasn’t, either,_ I snarled _. Read her thoughts to see what that was like. Read mine and tell me how willing you’d be to go through that again. If you’re so damned determined to be sweetness and light to a psychopath, you got the means to drag Creed’s head outa the water. But Rachel needed an end, and I gave it to her!_

Chuck mercifully stayed silent as I turned Rachel towards the jet.

When we reached the rescue collar dangling from the jet, I looped it around both of us and jerked the line twice. Once Rachel wrapped both arms around my neck, I supported her with one arm and kept us tightly in the collar with the other. It was a long thirty seconds before Beast pulled us into the jet, and I let my breath go only when we climbed out of the collar and the drop gate closed behind us.

Chuck’s head swiveled towards me from his seat. _Rachel, Logan, I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal. But I must ask Rachel some questions before you both stand down. It’s very important._

Rachel didn’t move. She was way past overload – heart racing, skin ashen, body shaking, scent flooded with adrenaline and a riot of emotions, everything crashing in on itself.

 _Leave her alone_ , I thought harshly. _You wanna ask somebody somethin’, ask me._

_I ask only to save her life, Logan._

I grimaced, but guided Rachel forward to sink into the seat beside Chuck. I took the one next to her.

 _You triggered your distribution net to publish your Weapon X information,_ Chuck spoke in our minds.

Rachel nodded mutely.

_I want to stop that. You sign your death warrant if it goes public._

Rachel shut her eyes. Her thoughts weren’t articulate, but the overwhelming sense was that she expected to die whether anything went public or not. Part of her wanted to die.

_As I said, I can offer you an alternative. I can stop your distribution, and I can see that the right people put a stop to the predations you’ve endured. I can also use your information to stop the worst abuses, but to do that without triggering a violent response needs delicate handling, rather than widespread dissemination._

Rachel’s thoughts crumbled – too many questions, too many ramifications, too much devastation. I was about to growl at Chuck for pressing her. But every now and again, the world’s most powerful telepath showed a little compassion, a little humanity, and he figured out how to say what mattered most to Rachel.

 _I can see to it that Weapon X forgets you, Rachel_.

Chuck’s mental touch had been as quiet, as gentle as a feather. Rachel put her head back against her seat. Her eyes were shut, but tears glistened on her lashes and cheeks. She nodded.

 _Thank you,_ Chuck whispered _._

Mercifully, Chuck got out of our heads. He looked straight ahead and shut his eyes, setting about his psychic magic. Rachel was limp in her seat and didn’t move when I leaned over to buckle her into the harness. Beast padded by me softly and sat in the seat ahead of me.

“Anything I need to do?” he asked, nodding at Rachel.

I shook my head. “What day is it?”

“You disappeared a month ago. They took Rachel three weeks ago. It’s the twenty-seventh.”

I exhaled, winced. “Seems like longer. Where are we?”

“About 75 kilometers from Rainbow Lake in Alberta. We spotted a small military facility nearby.”

“Think ‘Ro can fly over it?”

“Sure.”

I nodded at Rachel. “Don’t leave her alone.”

“Of course.”

I left Rachel long enough to go up front, took a gander at the controls noting the location of the place, and nodded my thanks to ‘Ro for her part in our pickup.

“You okay?” she asked, turning concerned eyes on me.

“More or less. Wasn’t pretty.”

“How’s Rachel?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. “They… pushed me real hard, ‘Ro. Messed with my head tryin’ to make me kill her. I almost… didn’t work my way around that. But I got us out, and she kept us out because she held me together. I shoulda scared her to death. She didn’t flinch. I don’t know why.”

“Yes, you do,” ‘Ro murmured, checking her instruments before meeting my eyes again.

“I coulda killed her, ‘Ro.”

“You didn’t, Logan. You took care of her as best you could, just like she did for you.”

I nodded. “That she did. But she shouldn’t have to. Not like that.”

“You can’t control what that psycho Sabretooth or Weapon X do, Logan –“

“No, I can’t, and that’s just it, ‘Ro. The mere fact of my livin’ and breathin’ sets anyone I know up for their bullshit. She deserves better.”

“Yes, she does,” ‘Ro nodded. “And so do you, Logan. It isn’t right for you, either. I don’t know everything that the Professor has in mind, but he knows you both deserve better. If anyone can ease that, maybe he can.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” I growled, but I wasn’t angry at ‘Ro for offering what hope she had. And maybe Chuck’s mental wizardry could blunt some of Weapon X’s obsession, maybe even strip Rachel from their collective thoughts.

Maybe I should ask him to strip me out of Rachel’s thoughts. As much as that would hurt me.

“Logan,” ‘Ro said. “Before you do anything, decide anything, give the Professor time to work. Give Rachel and yourself time to recover. She’s been good for you, and you for her. Don’t let that go until you have to.”

I rubbed my eyes, met hers. I nodded. “Thanks, ‘Ro.”

“I’ll have us home in forty.”

I went back to my seat, and Hank went back to the copilot seat next to ‘Ro. Chuck was still turned inward, and Rachel was oblivious despite the roar of the jet. I strapped myself in and let go.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, kid.”

When I opened my eyes, the jet was quiet and still. We were on the ground. It was empty except for Logan and me. He sat next to me, quiet if tired, but he was himself, not the trapped animal he’d been just a day ago. What they’d done to him – couldn’t think about that. From a long way away, I was grateful for his survival, but I was so exhausted that I couldn’t find the breath to reply. All I could do was meet his eyes.

“I got two words for you.”

I couldn’t find the will to answer.

“First one’s soap. Second one’s water. Unless you like filthy rank so much you want to keep sittin’ here in the jet.”

I was numb. I couldn’t stop thinking about – had to stop thinking about… all of it. It was better to be numb than to think about what had happened, how relieved/horrified/repulsed I’d been to –

Couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t. Be numb. Numb.

Just like when my parents had died. Worse.

I felt sick. I wanted to die.

“C’mon, darlin’,” Logan coaxed. He leaned forward slowly. “Gonna unbuckle your harness. Then we’ll get outa here. Get that shower you wanted.”

I let him unbuckle the straps, let him ease me out of my seat. I couldn’t speak. It was hard to focus on Logan for all the images flashing in my head. So many shattered nightmares– red scenes in a cell where I was harried, unable to die – the resistance of flesh against the knife in my hand and the sudden release when Logan’s claw slid between vertebrae – Silver Fox’s terror and agony as she drowned in her own blood –

Stop it!

Can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop –

STOP. NUMB. BE NUMB.

I didn’t know where most of me was. I didn’t even know who I was because of all the images in my head. The jet around me swam. I groped for Logan’s arm to guide me down the back stairs of the jet. My body didn’t seem to work. It hurt all over. My eyes leaked.

When we came out on the X-Men flight deck, Hank McCoy waited for us.

“Logan, Anna Marie’s ready for you in the kitchen. Rachel, I’m sure that all you want right now is to take a bath and go to sleep,” he said sympathetically. As usual, his quiet voice was at such odds with his fierce appearance. “But I want you to be safe. I want to check you over to make sure there isn’t anything we need worry about. Would you let me do that?”

I nodded mechanically, even without Logan’s silent encouragement. I followed Hank down to the infirmary. He was very gentle, quiet, not intrusive, but while I lay on the examination table, I heard Logan’s low words about what he needed to look for. Most of it was so insidious that I should have been outraged. I should have been shocked when Hank considered whether I was suicidal enough to call for a sedative. Logan agreed that I shouldn’t be left alone, but argued hard until Hank backed off on the drugs. How could they help me? I was already numb. All I could be was numb. Thank God, everything was done with a few drops of blood and some non-invasive body scans. Soon enough I was the recipient of a new tetanus booster and megadoses of antibiotics.

I wondered if his scans had picked up the monster that had killed all those soldiers, the one that had killed Victor Creed and was glad that he was dead. Could he immunize me against that?

By the time Hank helped me off the table, Logan was back, looking easier, less drawn about the eyes. He smelled of food, something spicy. He guided me from the infirmary back into the mansion. None of the students was in sight, for which I was grateful. I didn’t want to see anyone. He led me upstairs past the room where I’d stayed when I’d first come here. Logan’s was next door, and that was the door he opened. He guided me inside, then padded into the bathroom to turn on the light, then the water. Steam soon began to billow out into the room in clouds.

“Come on, darlin’.” He nudged me towards the light. “Water’s hot.”

For a long moment, I couldn’t move. I didn’t know how to navigate in this strange place. The silence, the neatness, the antiseptic smell so conflicted with my numbed brain and my reeking body. I felt sick enough to throw up, but there was nothing in my stomach to expel. I found myself on the floor, slumped against the wall, tears running down my face. I was numb inside and my voice was silent, but I couldn’t stop crying. So I let the tears fall and stopped wondering why they did. Logan didn’t say anything, but folded himself down beside me and eased me into his lap.

After some minutes, the flood of release exhausted me and passed. I was still numb. I didn’t know whether this calm was good or bad and didn’t care.

“C’mon, Rachel. Shower’s right here. You’re cold, and the heat’ll feel good.”

Now that he mentioned it, I was shivering, so maybe I was cold. Logan got me to my feet, helped me out of my scavenged clothes –

I’d killed for them –

NUMB. Numb. Be numb.

Logan guided me into the bathroom and helped me into the tub. I sat and let the hot water wash over me while Logan stripped his clothes. He sat beside me, put his head back against the wall, and shut his eyes, savoring the warmth. Some of the filth coating us washed slowly away. After a while, Logan soaped a washcloth and took up my arm. For as rough a man as some thought him, he worked carefully and gently, washing away all the ground-in filth that coated me. He even washed my hair, all before he tended to himself. Of course his skin emerged from the dirt without a mark, but some small corner of me was surprised that I had so few scratches and scrapes. The worst was the rawness around my neck from the chain, but once the initial flood of water stung my skin, the pain faded.

Nothing touched the filth I felt inside.

When he’d scrubbed all of the grime away, he let the tub fill with clean, hot water, and I rested against his chest to soak up the warmth. I barely knew who I was to be so clean and warm.

I fell asleep, long enough for my body to relax…

I woke up alone, cold. I spasmed – I was back in that cell – which cell? –

“Hey, darlin’.”

With his long, wet hair slicked back, Logan stood in front of the mirror, shaving his beard back to its usual long muttonchops. He used an old-fashioned razor like I’d seen once in a museum, with a long blade that glinted like his claws in the fluorescent light. It held my gaze for a long moment. He caught me looking at it, and put it down on the far side of the sink. Then I noticed his ribs were more prominent than they should have been, and where he’d shaved revealed a face leaner than I’d seen before.

“C’mon and dry off,” he said, holding a clean towel out to me.

I fumbled my way out of the tub. Logan dried me off, untangled my hair, and led me out of the steamy bathroom. I had no clothes to change into, so he wrapped me in a blanket and coaxed me onto the bed. He didn’t go back to his shaving until I sank into the pillows against the headboard. I closed my eyes and listened to Logan rinse his face.

In a few minutes, Logan dropped something beside me. When I opened my eyes, I found him dressed in a tee shirt and jeans. A pair of jeans and a flannel shirt lay on the bed beside me.

“Hope they’re not too big.” There was a big slash in one of the knees. “Guess you can tell they’re mine, eh?”

I think I was supposed to smile, but I wasn’t sure how to do that anymore, or even why I should. He nudged me to sit up and stick my arms out of the blanket enough to ease the shirt on. Then he got me to slide over to the side of the bed and pull the jeans on. It was so hard to move. The shirt hung down way past my hips, which was a good thing because the jeans threatened to fall down.

“Looks like you need a couple of safety pins. The kids usually keep some in the hall bathroom.”

Logan let himself out. He soon returned with a couple of pins. He put one in each side of the jeans so they stayed up. Then he rolled the long shirtsleeves up to my elbows.

“You hungry?”

I shrugged.

“Need to eat, darlin’. Rogue made chicken soup for you. I had some. It’s good.”

I hesitated. From somewhere I forced myself to speak. It felt alien. “No… people.”

“Just you and me.”

“Numb.”

Logan exhaled. “It’s a protective mechanism, darlin’. You’ll feel somethin’ when you can handle it. Right now, your body needs to take care of the physical, get somethin’ in your stomach.”

I let him draw me out of his room and into the hall.

We went down to the kitchen. Several of the children gathered around the TV to watch a movie, but they quieted as we went by. I heard whispers, and though I couldn’t make out the words, I flinched. I didn’t want to think about what they might be saying. One or two others studied in the library, but they were oblivious to our passing. Mercifully, the kitchen was empty. An extra large Dutch oven full of jambalaya simmered on the stove, and a smaller pot held the chicken soup. Logan put a big pasta bowl full of the steaming soup in front of me before he dished out seconds of the jambalaya for himself. A carton of milk and a couple of glasses sat on the table.

Logan ate like he hadn’t in a month, which was close to true. I wasn’t much less ravenous, once I’d taken the first bite – the plain chicken, carrots, celery, and egg noodles tasted like the best thing I’d ever had. Both pots were nearly empty by the time we drained the last of the milk.

“Better,” he said.

I nodded.

“Good stuff. Oughta be. Rogue’s from Mississippi so that’s the real stuff.”

I didn’t know what to say. My body felt stiff and unfamiliar, but mechanically I got up and took the dishes to the sink. It was something to do rather than think. I fumbled to soap and rinse bowls, spoons, and glasses, and left them to dry in the dish drainer. I put the leftovers in the refrigerator.

A couple of the children burst into the kitchen for snacks. I flinched. They would have retreated, but we left the kitchen to them, and went outside to the central hall of the mansion, dimly lit as it always was at night. Two days ago, I’d been in a cell, and Logan had endured horrific abuse. Just one day ago, we’d curled up under a bare cliff of rock to sleep. A few hours ago –

I couldn’t face that yet.

Now we were back in the mundane world. It felt unreal. Flat. Or, as Logan had said, maybe that was all my brain could manage.

Logan had taken pains not to touch me while we ate, but as a couple more of the children around the TV headed for the kitchen, we moved aside to let them by. When our arms touched briefly, Logan’s emotions manifested at once. He was still very tired, but I was surprised to find little anger. Instead, concern for me swirled quietly. I laid my hand on his chest.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “For fighting what they did to you, for getting me out, for understanding why I needed to… for helping me do it. I know that’s inhuman, wrong, sick… but I needed to.”

He folded me into his arms and nuzzled my ear. “So did I.”

There was a lump in my throat too large to let me speak.

We went upstairs. He eased us inside his room and shut the door. He stroked my hair, then his arm went around me, and his body eased as he let down. I shut my eyes and let my body curve into his. As Logan rubbed my back slowly, my body filled with endorphins, and I relaxed without conscious thought. As I calmed, so did he.

In the dark, we settled on the bed against the pillows, clothes and all. As his body curled familiarly around mine, his emotions comforted me. There was still residue from the stand we’d had to make at the river, from the mental and physical beatings he’d taken for so many days. But as horrible as it sounded, what we’d done to Creed had brought him resolution, and his emotions were steady. He had such a strong sense of self. His experience balanced my lack, and it was easier for me to live with what had happened. For the first time in a month, I felt safe.

 

* * *

 

When I woke up the next morning – where was I? Another drugged illusion? There was none of the distortion, the flatness, of drugs in what I sensed, and no pain. I was in bed. In Chuck’s mansion? I had on jeans and a tee shirt. Clothes? When was the last time I’d slept here in my clothes?

Someone lay beside me in a tight knot, tangled in the bedclothes. Female, small, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, raven hair against her cheek like heavy silk. She had one of my flannel shirts on. What the hell?

It all came flooding back.

It was over.

We’d survived.

I held her like the gift she was, grateful for her presence and the peace that brought, grateful that I was clean and warm and without pain. Still asleep, Rachel snuggled closer, her hand slipping under my shirt, warm and smooth on my chest. Her head lay peacefully on my shoulder. She’d been walking dead last night – I’d left her with Hank in the infirmary only because without food I would’ve dropped. I’d been lucky that Rogue had been in the kitchen. She was the nearest thing I had to a sister, but one look at me and she’d known how close it had been, and hadn’t teased me about the stench. She’d had a big pot of her Mississippi specialty on the stove, and she’d hauled it to the table and paired it with a spoon.

“Sit. Ah heard you were on your way back, so Ah started cooking,” Rogue had drawled.

I’d nodded my thanks and started to shovel pure ambrosia down my throat.

“Is Rachel in any better shape? Don’t talk. Jus’ keep eating and nod or shake your head.”

I’d shaken my head and shoveled in another mouthful.

“Then don’t leave her for long, sugah. Ah like her. You tell her that whatever she did was worth it, ‘cause being above ground is better than the alternative. She don’ know that the way you and Ah do.”

I’d stopped wolfing down jambalaya to give Rogue the eye, but she’d met my gaze without apology. She hadn’t asked what had happened because she’d already figured out most of it.

“Good jambalaya.”

Rogue had smiled and turned back to stir another pot. “Glad you made it back, Logan. Ah got chicken soup for Rachel when she’s ready. Ah figured she might need something bland after whatever hell y’all have been in for the past month.”

Once I’d eaten, I had reserves enough to get Rachel in the shower. She hadn’t talked, had barely been able to move, had kept falling asleep then spasming awake, probably flashing back to the past month. I hadn’t liked the way she’d fixated on my razor when she’d woken in the tub – too much bright yearning in her eyes – so it’d gone in my jeans pocket and was still there now. Even after that, I’d kept a sharp nose out for blood. But once I’d gotten her dressed and down to the kitchen, she’d dug right in after the first tentative bite. She’d even found the energy to clean up the dishes. After the long sleep, maybe she’d eased…

Who was I kidding? Rogue was right – as much as Rachel had needed the catharsis of Creed’s death, getting it had wrought almost as much damage as not getting it would have. She still had all the crap in her head from him as well as her own nightmares. She’d need weeks to ease her guilt and horror over the price of survival.

A half hour passed while Rachel slept quietly. I drowsed beside her until she stirred.

“Hey,” I murmured.

“Hmmm?” she murmured. Her hand ran over my chest, stroking my hair.

I grinned. “Still like the pelt, eh?”

“Yes.” Her whisper held no teasing tone, just simple appreciation. “I do.” She tugged a handful gently and sighed. When she started to wake up, her scent changed from drowsy ease to something more sober, more subdued.

“You okay?” she asked tentatively, after many minutes had gone by.

That she said anything was a good sign. That she thought about something other than Creed was better. “Here, I am. You?”

Her hand tightened on my shoulder. “Here, I am.”

Neither of us spoke, and nothing telepathically transferred between us, but the clothes we’d awakened in found their way to the floor, and appreciation for peace, warmth, and each other led to other things. Sometimes making love is slow, passionate, and fiery; other times, it’s urgent and blatant, pure gasoline-fueled lust. This time, it was gratitude for basic survival.

Later, when I nuzzled Rachel’s ear, I tasted salt. Tears.

“I didn’t think I’d ever do that again,” she whispered. “I thought I’d die in that cell. I thought I’d die when I saw what they’d done to you. I thought I’d die on that river. I thought it so many times that after a while I almost wanted to. Last night, I did want to.”

I shut my eyes. “I wanted to die in that cell. Then I smelled you. After that, I just bided my time.”

Rachel thought about that. “You smelled me when they brought me in?”

“Yup. No scent like yours. Even before you got filthy rank. Though that made it a lot easier to keep you in mind as time went on.”

She tensed. “When things got bad, you mean.”

It’d all been bad, but she didn’t need to know that. I stroked her hair. “Yup.”

She swallowed. “I worked as fast as I could, Logan. I’m sorry it took two days to collect everything Weapon X wanted.”

“You knew it was a set up, Rachel. You shoulda run like hell and forgotten about a gaijin ronin.”

A foreign samurai without alliance, I called myself, but I should’ve known that that would get a rise out of Rachel. Her body was taut and her hand stroked my chest restlessly.

“You’re not a ronin, Logan. You’re the samurai of the House of Osaka, and I wasn’t about to dishonor that, regardless of their intentions. I worked as fast as I could. But I don’t understand why they held us so long after they took me.”

“Most mental tampering doesn’t work on me unless I’m pushed real hard. I was, for a long time. Sometimes I knew who the liars were. Other times…”

“Like when they brought you to my cell?”

“Yup. They thought they’d finally broken me.” At the time, I hadn’t been entirely sure that they hadn’t. That was something else she didn’t need to know.

“But you didn’t do what they wanted.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“They can mess with my head, darlin’, but they can’t fool my senses. Your scent. Your voice. Your eyes. I kept a piece of you deep inside with a piece of me, and when they put me in the cell with you, I remembered.”

“But before you saw me…”

“I was pretty messed up.”

“And now?”

I exhaled and rubbed her arm slowly. “I’m alive. Nothin’ hurts and everything’s still attached. I’m clean and warm and in bed with my beautiful woman, with no place to go and nothin’ to do except whatever you and I want to do. That’s damn’ good for the moment.”

“How do you go on, get over it? How do you get though the first day without being numb or suicidal?”

I considered her questions soberly. “I don’t have either of those options, darlin’. I’ve tried, but I don’t stay drunk or dead for long, so I gotta do other things. Most of the time, I stay in the Danger Room until I’m exhausted enough to sleep, and after a few days I wake up with enough distance to rejoin the human race – well, as much as I ever do.”

I stroked her hair. “This time, I have two things goin’ for me that I don’t usually have.”

“What?”

I eased Rachel closer, nestling her into my chest. “That wasn’t the first assassination I’ve done, darlin’. You know that. Takin’ a life ain’t ever somethin’ to be done lightly. But this one, I knew why I was doin’ it, that it was deserved, and I don’t regret it. Don’t beat yourself up for knowin’ what had to be done, or findin’ the guts to do it.”

Rachel tensed and her eyes leaked, but from her scent, she felt relief as well as guilt.

“The better thing goin’ for me… I… heard what you said when they threw me into the cell. Was somebody filmin’ us?”

She nodded. It must’ve been the first guy I’d taken down in the cell. It’d happened so fast, and I’d hardly been sentient, so I remembered the camera only as the sound of something other than meat hitting the concrete floor when I’d struck.

“That was a brave and generous thing you did, sayin’ that. Not that I deserved it. I was the animal they called me, and you brought me back.”

“You aren’t an animal,” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t ever think you’re an animal!”

I stroked her hair. “Okay, I won’t… if you don’t think it about yourself. Havin’ the strength to survive does not make either of us an animal.”

Rachel stilled. I shut my eyes and thought only of quiet, of peace, of simple gratitude for survival, hoping it would leech into her thoughts. Maybe she’d believe me if she couldn’t believe herself.

She held me tighter like she didn’t want to think anymore. I’m never the guy who talks much, but I have other ways to tell a woman that she’s loved. It’d been a long time since I’d needed to say it so strongly, but I had no regrets in doing so now. Rachel needed to hear it – feel it – and so did I.

After a while, we agreed on the merits of breakfast, so we found clothes and I loaned Rachel a comb to untangle her hair. She looked like a kid awash in my jeans and shirt, but I didn’t fill out my duds, either. I’d lost close to 15 kilos over the past month.

We made it down to the kitchen without meeting anyone. One or two kids ducked in and out while we scrounged some food, but they didn’t stay long. Rachel spooked at loud noises and her eyes were so wide that anyone looking at her would know something grisly had happened. She moved about the kitchen as if she expected it to morph into a prison cell if she bumped into anything, but I smelled less despair and more thoughtfulness. I didn’t sense acceptance of what had happened yet, but there wasn’t as much yearning for death, either. I still kept my watch, but it wasn’t as close as it had been last night.

“There are lots of eggs. And some sausage,” she said quietly.

“Good by me. You want coffee or tea?”

“Either one.”

I fully expected Chuck to dip into my thoughts before we got anything in our stomachs, but he stayed silent while Rachel found a frying pan. She soon put an enormous platter of omelet and sausage in front of me, and I wolfed it down in less time than it takes to say it. Wordlessly she had another plateful ready for me, which I was no slower in emptying. The third one I took more time over. After that, I was able to think about something other than my stomach.

“Good,” I nodded. “Thanks.”

Rachel sipped her tea. In between all the cooking she’d done for me, she’d eaten, too, and she looked easier. “You’re welcome. Do you need more?”

I shook my head. “I’m good for an hour or so. Chuck’s gonna have to restock the fridge, anyway.”

_Logan, Rachel, please forgive the intrusion, but I’d like to talk to you both when you’re through your breakfast. I’ll be in the library when you’re ready._

“I wondered when he’d show up.” I flicked Rachel a look.

Her eyes were full of something that wasn’t visible. Another flashback, a nasty one by the signs of it. What had Weapon X put in her head to scare her so badly? Or had she spooked at Chuck’s contact? Had a black ops telepath worked on her?

“Rachel. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to, darlin’. Could be he’ll have good news.”

She swallowed, beyond words. Her scent jacked up in fear, her body wouldn’t settle, and her eyes glowed like embers. I held my hand out to her across the table. She hesitated before she put hers in mine.

“You had it right from the start, Rachel,” I told her firmly. “You didn’t choose what happened, but you did what you needed to do to survive. And survival is all that matters.”

I squeezed her hand to make sure her empathic talents picked up full measure of my certainty. She nodded, thanks without words.

Once we’d cleaned the kitchen, we headed to the library. Rachel lagged behind me, so clearly reluctant that I wondered whether Chuck was smart to push so soon. Even though Rachel didn’t hesitate when I let her precede me into the library, shreds of last night’s terminal despair stung my nostrils.

As Rachel moved forward, I held back so she didn’t see me tap my temple, asking Chuck to read my thoughts. _Go easy, Chuck. She’s in pieces._

 _Understood,_ echoed in my mind.

“Good morning, Rachel, Logan,” Chuck rolled his wheelchair from behind his desk and came forward. As usual, he was impeccably dressed in one of his hand-tailored suits, but he looked tired. “I hope you’re both recovering from your terrible ordeal. Rachel, I want to reassure you that I didn’t ask you here to talk about what you went through, unless you want to. Rather, I wanted to update you about what I have done since yesterday.”

We took two of the leather chairs in front of Chuck’s desk, and arranged them so that the wheelchair fit comfortably between us.

“I was successful in my attempt to halt the widespread dissemination of information across your net, Rachel,” Charles began. “It was quite extensive, and I congratulate you on your thoroughness and your ingenuity. As a direct result of the care you put into your efforts, I was able to proceed very quickly with alternate plans. As we speak, some of those people are at work to rein in some of Weapon X’s worst abuses. It will be done discreetly, and it will have no connection with either of you.”

I met Chuck’s eyes, but didn’t have anything to say.

Rachel, however, kept her eyes on her hands. “Please, protect Daniel O’Shea. Daemon. He’s the mutant who helped me build the net, who knew when I dismantled it. He should have alerted you to Weapon X’s demands not long after I disappeared. I don’t want him tangled in this. Enough people have been hurt by what I did.”

“I am aware of your friend’s talents and his efforts. He was quite worried about you, and did his best to bring the web to bear on your disappearance. He is part of my efforts now –”

“No – I don’t want him to become another target –”

“I don’t think you fully appreciate your friend’s abilities,” Chuck smiled reassuringly. “He has quite impressive gifts, and he’s protected himself well. I was most happy to make his acquaintance, and he has expedited many aspects of what I’d hoped to do. So please don’t worry on his behalf. Daniel sends his regards and his relief that you are safe.”

Rachel calmed enough to nod acceptance of Chuck’s reassurance.

“Logan, you already know that our resources are yours as you need them. Rachel, I’d like to extend my help to you, as well. You are welcome to spend a few days here with us, but you are free to do as you see fit. I can’t begin to understand what a desperate time you have had over the past three weeks, but I offer you the full resources of the institute in any way that would be helpful. Jean would be glad to talk with you at any point, as would I. Through Hank McCoy, you have access to any number of directions, in whatever way would best help you. All of us want to help, Rachel. You aren’t alone.”

Rachel took a deep breath, and glanced at me. I met her eyes, and she understood that I had her back however she needed me to. She looked back at Chuck and nodded.

“Thank you. I don’t know what I need yet, but I appreciate your offer of help.”

“I’m here as you need,” Chuck smiled again. “And I’ll keep you posted on my progress and any news.”

We got up, and I walked Rachel to the door. “Give me a couple of minutes with Chuck, okay?”

She tensed, but I put my hands on her shoulders in reassurance. “Just a couple minutes.”

She nodded and let herself out. When she was gone, I came back to my chair and sat down. “I’m real happy you’re gonna push some people into playin’ nicer, Chuck. I really am. I’d like to do you a favor to help with that.”

“What’s that, Logan?”

“I want you to read my mind about how I spent the last four weeks. See what it was like as close to firsthand as you can get without livin’ through it yourself.”

“That’s not necessary, Logan –”

“Yeah, it is. It’s real important.”

I gave Chuck credit for considering my rough voice and subvocalization as just the importance of my request and not a threat. He conceded with a shrug, and put his hands out to touch my temples.

“Just relax…”

He got most of it in a second or two. He had the humanity to shudder at the intensity of what he’d read. When he opened his eyes, I nodded, recognizing his dismay.

“My God, Logan. How did you stand –”

“Because I can’t die even when I want to,” I growled. I took a deep breath. “Sorry. Kinda fresh memories.”

“Of course. I understand, certainly. What I don’t understand is why you wanted me to read that.”

“You want the guys who did me to play nice, Chuck. They don’t know what that means.”

“Meaning…?” Chuck prompted.

“I’m a realist, Chuck. You won’t get ‘em to play nice. I’ll take my own shot to get ‘em to back off.”

“So I expect,” Chuck said heavily.

“I won’t do it for me. In a sicko way, they did me because I was one of their own. But Rachel wasn’t. What they put her through was bad enough – drugs, sensory deprivation, maybe worse. The only reason they didn’t give her what I got is because they wanted me to kill her, and they didn’t want to give me any reason not to. They didn’t want their scent on her; they didn’t want her to look like she’d been tortured so I’d feel any sympathy. That’s all that stopped them, and I’ll see that they take heat for it. That’s who you’re tryin’ to change, Chuck.”

Chucked winced at my intensity, and I had to force myself to stop subvocalizing my anger. He leaned forward and bowed his head over his hands.

“Even after reading your thoughts, Logan, I can’t fully appreciate what you went through. To have fought such vicious coercion for as long as you did, and to have cared for Rachel despite it, is a testament to your strength of will.”

I got to my feet. “I broke us out, true enough. But Rachel gets the credit for keepin’ us out. She was smart, she was strong, she stayed cool, and she held me together when I couldn’t. She handled a lot of the dirt, too. Did you know that the last time Creed came after her, he flooded her with what he felt when he raped and killed my wife, while he was tryin’ to do the same to her? She knew what it was to die by his hands and that she was next – whether on the river or sometime later. That’s why she took down Victor Creed and why I helped her. If that offended you enough to do somethin’ about it, make sure that what you did doesn’t put her at risk again.”

I walked to the door.

“I know you didn’t mean that as a threat, Logan.”

I swung around, meeting Chuck’s eyes squarely. “Call it an appeal to your humanity from someone who doesn’t have the best social graces, Chuck. You play by honorable rules. They don’t.”

I thought real hard about the night when Victor Creed had attacked Rachel and how hard she’d fought. I had the satisfaction of seeing Chuck flinch.

“Yup. Don’t put her through that again.”

I left the library. Rachel waited for me on the terrace. She looked up at the sky as if appreciating it for the first time, at the rolling green around the mansion as if she’d never seen such a sight. It occurred to me that if I were left to my own devices, I’d be in the Danger Room creating mayhem, going through my old cycle of exhaustion and rage to clear my head. But no one had ever called me a samurai of the House of Osaka before. Maybe I needed to try something else. Something that would heal two.

I headed out to the terrace. Rachel’s talents had already told her of my arrival, and she met me with the best sign that she had taken the first step away from despair.

She smiled.

 

 

# # #


End file.
